‘How about “Where the hell have you been?”’ suggested Rose, smiling at her.
Lisa giggled. ‘Yeah – or, like, you owe me, big time: eight birthday presents and eight Christmas presents and I want them all now!’
Rose laughed. ‘Cut to the chase, why don’t you!’ She paused. ‘On the other hand, you could say something like “I’ve missed you.” ’
Lisa frowned. ‘You can’t say something like that – not right away, anyway. And I don’t know if I have missed him. I mean, you only usually miss someone who was always there and then goes away for a little while. If they go away and never come back, it’s like they were never there in the first place. Isn’t it?’
Out of the mouths of babes, Rose thought.
‘Perhaps. But he was here for all the years when you were a little girl. I think you’ll find things to talk about. And I think you need to decide sooner, rather than later, when to meet up. You don’t need to hide from this, Lisa; you’ve done nothing wrong. And there really is nothing to be afraid of. He’s your dad and he loves you.’
‘Will you be there, too?’
‘If that’s what you want, yes. For the first time, anyway. After that, you can always change your mind.’
‘Do we have photographs of when I was little?’ asked Lisa suddenly.
Rose felt something fall down inside her. It made her feel anxious, cautious, in need of a long, careful breath. Pandora’s box again, she thought. What am I letting myself in for? Or rather, what am I letting out to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting fourteen-year-old?
‘Sure,’ she said easily, nodding. ‘I put a great big pile of them into the attic only last year – we didn’t have room on the shelves with all your books. Do you want to get them?’
Lisa nodded. ‘Yeah. I’ll root them out on Saturday. Are they all in albums?’
Rose laughed. ‘You must be joking! What do you think I have, an organized life, or something?’
‘Can I do that, then? Can I put them into albums?’
‘You certainly can. Go into town tomorrow afternoon after school and buy a truckload of the nicest albums you can find.’
‘Okay.’ Lisa nodded, happy. Her mobile bleeped beside her on the sofa, and she dived on it, hooting with laughter as she saw the new text.
Rose kissed her daughter on the cheek and went out into the hallway, wondering what message Ben had chosen to leave her this time.
There was a large, brown envelope on the hall table. She slid her finger under the gummed flap and looked inside. Puzzled, she went to slide the contents into her hands, but they slithered out much too quickly, falling onto the floor before she could catch them. They lay there, all primary colours, like the large pieces of a child’s first jigsaw. Curiously, she bent down to look.
Brochures. Estate agents’ brochures. Dozens of them, with bright happy houses for sale. Houses for auction, houses for sale by private treaty, unbeatable investment opportunities: invitations to ‘Buy Now! There’s never been a better time! Interest rates at an all-time low!’
And there, adhered to the top left-hand corner of the most expensively produced glossy photograph, was a square yellow Post-it. ‘Just thought this would give you an idea of what we could be looking at, value-wise. Ben.’
For an instant, Rose felt stunned. We? Value-wise? What ‘we’ was he talking about? There was no ‘we’, no ‘us’ – he had seen to that. And to what ‘value’ was he referring? The value of commitment, of love, of the security and stability of children? The value of home?
Then it came again. That spool of anger, winding its way through her, filling her chest, her head, the space behind her eyes. She felt caught in a tornado of fury, a tidal wave of rage that saw her gather the leaflets off the floor and fling them into the bin in the kitchen, slamming its swing top down hard so that it flew back and forth, back and forth, finally settling into a white lopsided torpor.
She rummaged furiously in her handbag, looking for the notebook with Ben’s number. This time she’d had enough. First Monday, now this. Her mobile rang, just as she was about to call him. She answered at once. It had to be him. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
‘Rose?’ The voice on the line was familiar, startled.
‘Yes, Ben.’ She kept her tone curt. She had no time for social niceties, not now, not ever again. He had really blown it this time.
‘Ah . . . it’s Sam, actually. I said I’d give you a call in an hour or so, just to make sure things were okay. Are you all right? Am I interrupting anything?’
Rose felt the balloon of anger deflate suddenly, its heat begin to leak away. ‘I’m sorry, Sam. I thought you were Ben.’
‘I think I’m . . . rather glad that I’m not, right now – if it’s all the same to you.’
Rose could almost hear him grin. His tone made her smile, just a little. ‘Well, on balance, it’s much safer that way, believe me.’
She sat at the kitchen table, feeling suddenly weary, suddenly very troubled by the strength of her anger, the intensity of its grip. Something was squeezing her, making her breath short, her head light. This had to stop: she had to calm down, think sensible thoughts.
‘Things are okay – I think I might just have overreacted.’ She paused for a moment, feeling the rest of her anger seep away, leaving ragged, hollow spaces behind it. ‘Ben left in some brochures from – oh, I think just about every estate agent in the city. I saw red. And I mean that, literally – lost all sense of proportion. I think it’s all the assumptions that just get me going. I mean, we haven’t even discussed the future yet. He agrees not to push me and then he goes and does something like this? It makes me so mad.’
‘In the circumstances, that’s not too hard to understand. Is your daughter all right?’ Sam’s voice was light, easy. Its very ordinariness reassured her.
‘She’s fine. I think I just picked up on her panic. I guess I should know better, but these days I can’t distinguish between what’s important and what’s not. I’ll have to try and . . . be more measured.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Sam?’
‘Yeah, I’m still here.’
‘Sorry, I thought I’d lost you.’
‘No, I’m here. Why don’t you pour yourself a glass of wine and watch a mindless midweek movie? I think there’s a great selection of nonsense on this evening.’
Rose smiled. ‘Sounds like just what the doctor ordered.’
‘Let’s meet up again towards the end of next week. I think our conversation today was somewhat interrupted. Would that suit, do you think?’
‘Yes, I’m sure it will. I won’t have time to breathe until after the weekend: we’ve a big party on Friday night. But I should be able to give you a call early next week.’
‘May I make a suggestion?’
‘Sure,’ said Rose, surprised at the sudden, serious change in tone.
‘Have you thrown out all the estate agents’ stuff that Ben left in for you?’
Rose looked over at the kitchen bin, feeling its plastic malice, feeling the urge to kick it all the way up and down the back garden. ‘Yes. Well, no – it’s all here, in the kitchen bin.’
‘Excellent. Then how about a three hundred and sixty degree revolution in your thought processes? Come around full circle.’ He paused.
‘You’ve lost me,’ said Rose. ‘Please, go on.’
‘Well, think of it as Ben having done you a favour. He’s obviously done a lot of legwork around the agency offices: use it for yourself. Bring all the brochures with you when we next meet, and we’ll have good, general information to go on before we get down to specifics.’
‘That’s a rather charitable interpretation of this particular brown envelope,’ said Rose dryly.
‘Maybe so,’ said Sam firmly. ‘But it costs you a lot less emotional energy if you think like that. Save your anger. In my experience, you’ll probably need it later on.’
Rose couldn’t help smiling. ‘You’re a wise man. Pauline said something very similar to me a
couple of days ago.’
‘There you go, then; we told you you were in good hands.’ There was a small silence. ‘How are you feeling. Any less mad?’
Warm, thought Rose. I’m feeling very warm indeed towards this man. And that is not something I need right now.
‘I’m fine. About to follow your prescription, in fact, and become a couch potato.’
‘Good. There’s just one more thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’d switch off your mobile, if I were you. Your greeting might be a bit off-putting to friends, not to mention your family.’
Rose had to laugh. ‘Not my normal style, I assure you. But these are not normal times. I can’t believe it’s not even a week since all this started up again.’
‘You’ll be fine, I promise you. Now go open that wine.’
Rose hung up thoughtfully. She went over to the bin, tipped it on its side and retrieved all the shiny brochures from among the teabags. She toyed with the idea of ringing Ben anyway and tearing a strip off him. But she dismissed it.
Why bother? It really wasn’t worth the effort.
Lisa bounced into the kitchen. ‘Mum, I forgot to tell you. Jane called. It’s little Katie’s birthday and she wants me to go down for cake and lemonade. I said I’d go, but I’ll be back well before half nine.’
‘Little Katie – do you still think of her as that?’ Rose teased her.
Lisa shrugged. ‘She’s only ten: that’s still little to me.’
‘That’s fine, love. Enjoy yourself. Tell Jane I’ll probably call her later.’
‘Don’t you want to come with me?’
‘Not tonight. I’m going to have a shower and then veg out with a glass of wine. Tell Jane she’s welcome to join me later on, when the party’s over.’
Lisa bent down and kissed her. ‘Okay. See you later, then. I’ll go down and watch Katie blow out her candles. You have a nice time.’
Rose hugged her. ‘You’re the best, do you know that?’
Lisa grinned at her. ‘Rumour has it.’
Rose stood under the hot water, feeling a curious, unaccustomed sense of anticipation. It was as though she had something to look forward to at last, something waiting for her once all this mess was over. She hadn’t felt anything like this in a long time, and the feeling reminded her of Mike. Rose was surprised at that: she hadn’t thought about him in ages. How many years had it been since they were together – four, five?
When they’d first met, she and Mike had felt like kindred spirits. It was as if each had been lying in wait for the other to emerge slowly, safely, from the wreckage of their previous lives. Ben’s treachery, they had quickly agreed, was equalled – perhaps even surpassed – only by Mike’s wife, the lovely Sally, who had locked him out of his own home; who’d tried to deny him access to his two daughters; who’d shacked up with someone to whom Mike would only ever refer as the Golfer.
For almost two years, Rose and Mike had tried to negotiate the wide open spaces between their fractured families: five children, three parents, one absent father and one Golfer. As lovers, they’d each been pulled and pushed by the needs of the family calamities around them. Finally, it all became too much. Mike missed his girls, grieved for them with an intensity that had made Rose feel ever more tenderly towards him. In the end, he had succumbed, wearily, inevitably, to Sally’s tearful entreaties to come back to her, once the Golfer had finally gone back to wherever it was he had come from.
And the rupture had hurt, there was no point in denying it. Rose shampooed her hair vigorously now, surprised at the clarity of the memories that were emerging from the steam. Bathrooms again, she smiled to herself. Somewhere to think, somewhere to pick through private memories, discarding the ones that hurt too much, cherishing the ones that didn’t.
She remembered now the last time she had run into Mike, remembered clearly the sense of loss that had accompanied that painful, final meeting.
It was Christmas Eve. Rose had gathered up the presents for Alison, James, Derek and little Katie and made her way down the road to Jane’s. The December night was foul: that stinging mix of icy wind and driving rain. She had had to concentrate hard on keeping her umbrella intact. When Jane answered the door, Rose was taken aback at the look of alarm on her face. The normally hospitable, warm and giving hostess was now visibly panicked, white-faced.
‘What’s up?’ Rose had asked lightly, standing her dripping umbrella in the corner of the porch. ‘You look like you’ve just seen the ghost of Christmas past.’
‘Mike’s here,’ Jane whispered. She’d glanced over her shoulder nervously. There was an audible murmur of conversation from the living room.
Rose froze. ‘Shit.’ She had been about to turn, to run blindly from the house and escape whatever humiliation lurked in wait for her. Was Sally there, too? What could she possibly say to her – to either of them? How would she, Rose, look? Fraught? Lamped, like a rabbit in headlights?
Jane had pulled her by the elbow. ‘Come on – wait in the kitchen. He’s just going. I presume you don’t want to meet him?’
Rose shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. Is Sally here?’
Jane had given her a look. ‘Over my dead body,’ she hissed.
Well, at least that was one small mercy. Sally’s presence in this house, even if an uninvited and unwelcome one, would have felt somehow akin to the most enormous betrayal. Rose wasn’t quite sure how she would have coped with that. She allowed Jane to hurry her towards the kitchen.
‘Make yourself a cup of tea, or there’s wine in the fridge if you need to steady your nerves. I’ll see you in a few minutes, after he leaves – okay?’
Rose nodded. Her heart was racing, and she could feel perspiration creeping down her back, making her blouse cling. With some warning, some sort of preparation, she could have done it, she thought, but not here, not now, not with other people looking on. It would be awkward for everyone. One of those occasions for strained smiles, false politeness: all the sharp, hot restlessness of acute discomfort.
She took a glass from the draining board and poured herself some white wine, noticing as she did so that her hands were trembling, the palms clammy. Steady on, she told herself. You’re a sober, sensible, middle-aged woman, not a hormone-driven teenager. She slipped off her coat and sat at the table sipping her wine, waiting for her body to stop speeding.
Suddenly she heard his voice, and footsteps approaching, walking rapidly down the hallway. She sat absolutely still: it couldn’t be Mike. Jane wouldn’t do that to her.
Then she saw it. Folded innocently across a kitchen chair was Mike’s raincoat. She had seen it before, so many times. Hanging in the hallway of his apartment, thrown on the back seat of the car, folded carelessly across the chair of one of their favourite coffee haunts. It lay there, all beige and innocent, a waterproof ghost conjuring up images of unbearable intensity, a whole cloud of stunned, lost intimacy.
The door opened and Rose stood up. Over Mike’s shoulder she caught a glimpse of Jane’s horrified face before she fled back down the hallway again.
There was nothing else for it. Rose put her hands into her jeans pockets, hiding their trembling even from herself. Abrupt though it was, she at least had had a little more preparation than Mike. His face had drained of all colour, his eyes widened into a sudden, startled navy.
‘Rose!’
‘Hello, Mike,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t feel able to meet you, so I’m . . . hiding.’ She stopped, nodding to herself, as though at the wisdom of her decision. ‘I thought it would be easier for both of us.’
His face softened at once.
‘I’m so sorry – I never would have burst in like that had I known.’ There was a brief, not uncomfortable pause. ‘How are you?’
‘Yeah, good,’ she lied. She attempted a smile and could feel it instantly go all wrong. Her mouth felt suddenly unfamiliar, as though it didn’t belong on her face any more. ‘And you?’
He shrugged. ‘Okay. You know
.’
She paused, seeming to consider this. Her heart was thumping painfully against her ribcage. ‘And the girls?’
‘Bit of a nightmare, to be frank, but we’re getting there.’ He nodded now, too, as if mirroring her response. ‘Yeah, we’re getting there. And your crew?’
‘Good. They’re all well.’
‘Rose—’ he took a step forward.
At exactly the same moment, she took a step back. It was a tiny step, a barely perceptible movement. Afterwards, she wasn’t sure whether she had actually taken the step, or had simply initiated a process that would, eventually, have led to one. Whatever it was, it was enough. Mike had stopped in his tracks.
‘I hope it works out for you, Mike, I really do. Have a good Christmas.’
She watched him struggle, could almost see the words forming behind his lips. If he spoke, what would he say? The next couple of moments could propel both of them into a new chaos. She willed him to speak, willed him even more strongly to be silent.
‘Yeah. You too.’ He shoved his hands into his trousers pockets.
Somehow, Rose knew they were shaking every bit as much as hers. God, let this be over, please. I can’t bear it. ‘It’s been good seeing you again,’ she said finally, quietly, telling him to go now, quickly. ‘Take care of yourself.’
His half-raised hand had hovered somewhere between a handshake and a hesitant, truncated wave, trapped in mid-air. Rose was struck by how eloquent his body language was. There was a fog of incomprehension in the air between them. He didn’t know how to be with her any more – they didn’t know how to be with each other. There was nothing even of the familiarity of betrayal here, for either of them. There was no awkwardness either: more a sadness, tinged with a little desperation. There was nothing that could be said to make anything any better. He turned away, reluctance spelt by every measured step. He paused for a moment and gathered his raincoat up off the back of the kitchen chair. And then he was gone.
Jane reappeared in an instant. ‘Rose, what can I say? I’m so sorry – I’d no idea he’d left his coat in here. Are you okay?’
Something Like Love Page 16
